


four tired boys

by EmberCelica



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Late Night Conversations, Van Days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-15 22:10:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10558514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmberCelica/pseuds/EmberCelica
Summary: Joe rubs his eyes, not needing to adjust from the dark van to the darkness outside. His hand is wrapped around Patrick’s elbow. “Where’re we?”Patrick shrugs as Joe’s grip slips from his arm. “Somewhere between here and there.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asteriel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asteriel/gifts).



Somewhere, between highways and backroads and pressed together shows, shows, shows, they find the time to stop.

Winding roads, empty for the night and far too many distant hills for the midwest. High beams on and blinding, and Patrick thinks of the monsters darting away from the edges of the lights as Pete drives. Farm houses dot the isolated fields. They’re on a back road.

Andy doesn’t even question what Pete’s doing at first, because, Patrick assumes, he’s been fighting the urge to fall asleep for the last thirty miles. Patrick’s been watching; Andy’s been nodding off and shaking awake every ten minutes. He hasn’t given Pete anymore directions to follow other than “drive straight and stay on this road” which was probably over an hour ago.

The first sign should have been that Pete takes a left, which was a direct contradiction of instructions. Andy falls forward when Pete presses the brake, his seatbelt saving him from a ruder awakening. Patrick puts his hand out to catch himself. Joe’s half-asleep on Patrick’s shoulder in the backseat, Patrick being the only reason he doesn’t fall and smack his head on the front seats.

They’re supposed to drive on until they reach the next stop, where a friend of a friend of a friend has promised them a place to stay and food to eat in exchange for money they don’t have at the moment, but they’re ahead of schedule (because their last shows have been shit awful or cancelled and they’re all down in the dumps, to say the least, so focusing on getting there and nothing else is easy) and so Pete’s taking his sweet time to do, well, something.

Pete parks the van and through the tinted side windows, Patrick sees nothing. A little bit of fear and trepidation spikes in his chest. He hopes Pete doesn’t turn out to be the sort of person who tours with his band and turns around and kills his band mates, because that would be awful, and Patrick would miss the call he makes with his mom every couple of days when on tour. Out of everyone, Pete would probably kill him last, because they got into an argument about movies yesterday and Pete would want Patrick to suffer the most. Patrick stands by his opinion.  _Sixteen Candles_ just isn’t that good.

“Everyone out,” Pete says as he turns the key and the engine falls silent. He takes off his seatbelt and slides out of the van all at once. Andy follows suit, and Patrick has to pull sleepy, hoodie clad Joe out with him. Joe, as a knee deep in sleep person does, clings to Patrick before getting his bearings.

Joe rubs his eyes, not needing to adjust from the dark van to the darkness outside. His hand is wrapped around Patrick’s elbow. “Where’re we?”  
  
Patrick shrugs as Joe’s grip slips from his arm. “Somewhere between here and there.”

The air outside is cool and more fresh than the van, not curled stale with old shirts, the metallic smell of cases and disassembled drum sets, or the fucking spices or whatever Andy kept in his duffle bag. Patrick takes a deep breath, imagining his lungs like old balloons that inflate with new air and new purpose. He sees Pete stand there for a moment, like he’s just realizing what he’s done and trying to figure out what he’s doing next. The decision to pull over was not a conscious one, maybe more like floating on autopilot, Patrick decides. He has half a mind to suggest they just crash in the van on the side of the road for the night, if Pete’s really out of his mind from driving right now. Then Pete starts walking, and they have no choice but to follow.

Over time, Patrick’s eyes adjust better, only to take in what looks like a dark, upstanding sea in front of them. They’re at some top of a hill, where they can see the rolling fields down in front of them. When he listens, it’s not the crash of waves but hushed brushing and the nightlife of crickets, and he updates their location in his mind as near a wheat field in somewhere, Midwest. The moon illuminates enough to see the outline of the trees and the top of the fields.

Pete’s already sitting on the ground, watching over the swaying field in the distance. Andy’s standing beside him, reluctant to sink to the ground just yet. Patrick takes his place on the other side of Pete, and Joe leans on Patrick as they sit, the last thread of sleep still unraveling. Andy waits a few more seconds, then combs his fingers through the top of Pete’s hair before sitting down. Pete’s only acknowledgement is a slight nod towards Andy.

The only logical thing to do is to wait until Pete tells them why they’re here, so he looks over the wheat fields and lets his mind go on cruise control. _Show Pete the newer songs, call mom when we reach Vivian’s, economize money because there’s still a month left, ask Andy what he’s doing in that one part in Dead on Arrival...l_ _ook at colleges when tour is over, start applying to schools, fit practice in with school and work schedule, fit in writing music with school applications, work, and school, and practice? Figure out where you’re going._

 _Figure out a plan._  

It’s a cycle of confusion Patrick’s been through before, twenty seven thousand thoughts and responsibilities he can’t sort through before it scares him. It’s a hollow and overflowing feeling in his chest and he hates, _hates_ that he feels like he’s going nowhere. He’s trying so hard to remember the melody of the song he was working on last night when Pete finally speaks.

“We’re gonna love this." Far off, the wind whistles. "We’ll be doing this forever.” 

Patrick looks over at Pete, who's staring out, vision split between the top of the wheat field and to the sky. Patrick wonders what's ticking in his mind, what's Pete sees that the others don't. Patrick thinks about graduation, his and Joe’s, and what the plan is after that. About Pete’s graduation, too, and if Pete means it when he says he’d drop out for them. For _this._ He can’t—Pete can’t throw away something like that for a _chance._

“Care to elaborate?” Andy asks, and Patrick knows, at the moment, that Andy wouldn’t drop out for them. Come on, Pete’s impulsive but Andy’s so sure of himself, he’s balanced seven bands before with college, and he’ll probably end up as a professor who’s in twenty seven bands ten years from now. How special could they be? What differentiates them from the others Andy’s played for?

“I don’t have any doubts about us,” Pete continues, and Patrick pinches the frayed edges of the holes in his jeans and listens. “Our hearts are in this. We have something amazing between us. We’ll be something. We _are_ something. We’re gonna have the world.”

Patrick doesn’t know how he should feel, how he should interpret the turmoil inside him and what Pete’s saying. He’s talking about a permanent future, but is anything permanent? Is anything really definite?

There’s living for the present, and then there’s believing in a future where the present will always be worth living in. He’s giving reassurance, reclaiming the belief that they should be doing this, that it’ll accumulate to something worthwhile. Maybe it’s more than a chance, Patrick thinks. Maybe Pete knows something they don’t.

“Maybe we’ll be mature when we’re older.” Andy scoffs and Patrick smiles and Joe’s laugh is warm as he leans in closer to Patrick. “Nah, fuck that. We’ll always be a little immature, a little too cocky or stupid or outside of everything. Punk forever, or whatever the fuck we are. Whatever the fuck we’ll be. We’re transformative, changing right before our eyes. Who wants to place bets on who gets a mid-life crisis first?”

"You," Patrick says. "Twenty bucks on Pete _fucking_ Wentz, dude."

"Fuck off," Pete laughs. "You’re probably right. But I'll never grow old.”

“It _gets_ old when you’re running out of underwear on tour, because _someone_ keeps ripping it off you,” Joe accuses. It comes out of no where, but Joe's humor is the best for defusing situations. They burst into laughter. Andy’s giggle is a surprise, Patrick notes, rubbing his eyes, laugh falling from his lips like an afterthought. Pete’s laugh is a bark, and he reaches over and squeezes Joe’s leg when he’s done.  
  
Shaking his head, he says, “I am so sincerely sorry about hazing you, Joseph, except that I’m not. IOU new underwear?”  
  
Joe rolls his eyes but it's all ruined because of his grin. That’s the thing about Pete, you can’t get sick of him. “The Batman patterned kind, please.”

The laughter subsides as the memories fade a little, but the good mood is still there. Wind walks through the wheat fields, shadow over shadows, but Patrick isn’t scared of the dark. He feels safe with the other three, the van parked some ten or twenty feet behind. The atmosphere is too calm, too much them for anything to interrupt.

Pete talks again. Pete knows the words better than any of them do.

“Like, a roomful of kids? Twenty times that, a hundred times that—that’ll be the crowds we’ll play for. Fans of us—old, young, parents and kids and angry teenagers who don’t want to be understood except when they hear us—they’ll be there and they’ll scream the songs back at us and sing along to every word. We’ll remember the diehards, the ones who talk to us after shows, the ones who know us. We’re getting there." 

Joe exhales, like he’s been waiting for something like this, like he can see what Pete’s saying. Out of all of them, Joe’s always been a believer.  Patrick thinks of that Borders where he met Joe, and whether Joe had thought inviting some nosy kid to audition for a side project would end up with them touring around in a van, writing songs and making plans for an album. He probably didn’t expect to get invested like this, where band practices turned into movie marathons and sleepovers and meeting the parents when you stumble downstairs for breakfast. He wonders if he should thank Joe for finding him that day, or thank the forces of the universe for some chance encounter (for Patrick being a snobby, opinionated _nerd_ , Joe corrected once that made Andy laugh _hard_ ) to lead them here.

Joe and Pete share a quick look, across Patrick, and Patrick's reminded that Pete had found Joe first, or vice versa, and there were some things between them that he wouldn’t understand, the underlying bond of past bands that Patrick doesn't share with the two of them or Andy. Joe’s smile is wide and soft and genuine, and Patrick is unsurprised by the gentle...for the lack of a better word, _beauty_ of his friends, the unclassifiable kind beyond the basic physical stuff he sees. They’re all messed up and better for it. It’s weird, Patrick thinks, to be the new one among them, even if he was here before Andy. It’s even weirder that it feels like he’s known them for a lifetime or more.

Whatever the looks says ( _thanks for taking this chance, look where we are now, pretty good odds for a side project_ ) the message comes across clear and Pete grins back, bright in the dark, illuminated by the moon. Patrick feels pulled apart and stitched together and opened up all at once.

They’re here together. Patrick's reminded of something Joe had told him a couple days ago, how it didn't feel like they were something tangible until Andy joined. Andy's commitment definitely made it more serious for them, more solid. He was the piece they were missing, someone who was dependable and quiet and funny in the way that fit perfectly with them. That’s what differentiated them from Andy’s other bands, Patrick thinks. They’re different, they’re a risk. He doesn’t want to second guess Andy’s place in the band. As if reading Patrick’s thoughts, Pete throws an arm around Andy and pulls him closer, and Andy’s laugh sounds like music. They owe Pete for Andy.

Patrick’s heart is steady when Pete’s voice hits his ears, his cheeks warm against the night air. It’s because of them, because of taking a chance and giving the time and devotion that he’s _here._ He wants to love something so terribly he wouldn’t mind if it swallowed him whole (Music, drums, chords, people who understand Patrick better than anything else).

“Maybe they’ll get the songs tattooed on their wrists,” and Patrick hears the _over the bruises where they couldn’t cut into_ in the pause Pete leaves, because Pete wrote that line on the inside of Patrick’s arm once, when he was sleeping. Pete never talked about it afterwards, just kept typing into his phone and not sleeping. “And they’ll know every first and final word and they'll tell all their friends about how this one band understands them better than anyone.” 

Patrick looks up to the stars (purple haze when he doesn’t squint and blue, black void with tiny white dots when he does) and for what feels like the first time, doesn’t wonder what’s past them. He thinks only of down here, in the dirt and the grass and on the gravel road waiting for them, in the basements and bright stages and the crowds where people will know who they are and care about what they’re doing. He wonders what’s in store for them. 

Patrick wonders if they'll ever be someone's Metallica. The everyday armor they wear while trying to get through school, and work, and life, and everything. Patrick wants to be that for someone, more than anything.

“Okay,” Patrick says, too aware of his heartbeat, of vulnerability and life and _time_. Maybe he should be terrified, but right now he’s hopeful. It’s just enough. “We can do this. We can have the world.”

**Author's Note:**

> Something I wrote almost two years ago, maybe the third fic I ever wrote for FOB? Unbetaed, and released because it's been sitting in my documents for a lifetime and deserves to see the light of day. 
> 
> Dedicated to: anyone who's ever felt lost in life. You find a way eventually. 
> 
> For the prompt: things you said under the stars and in the grass. Leave a comment and tell me what you think! xo


End file.
